Ever grab something from the laundry basket (that load you’ve been meaning to put away!) and start smooshing or tossing it around in your hands because you can’t tell if it’s wet or just cold? It turns out that your fingers really can’t tell the difference, because our skin alone cannot actually detect if something is wet.

It’s bound to happen to millions of you this week as temperatures tumble across swaths of the country. 

(MORE: Potential nor’easter could bring rain, snow this week)

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Scientists say there are no specific sensors in or under our skin that identify moisture. Instead, our brains use a combination of other senses to infer, or suggest, that something is wet.

Why wet feels wet

In a study published in the Journal of Neurophysiology, a group of UK researchers found that our perception of wetness is intertwined with our abilities to feel cold and sense texture and pressure.  

So when they exposed test subjects to wet stimuli that were warm, neutral and cold, they found that subjects felt that things that were cold and wet felt wetter than things that were neutral or warm, even though they were experiencing the same amount of moisture each time. And since our brains associate cold with wet, even something that’s cold and dry may be misinterpreted as damp or wet.

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(MORE: The smell of snow isn't actually a smell)

Think of it this way: If you sit on a wet seat, your skin doesn’t sense the moisture — it actually senses the change in temperature, the heavier feeling and change in texture of wet fabric. And then, of course, you can see the difference between the dry and the wet spot. All those signals (plus past experience) tell your brain “I’m wet.”

Now, it doesn’t mean that wetness is just some kind of illusion, but it does mean that our perception isn’t always reliable.

Wetness can then become harder to detect in colder, wintry conditions, because cold and wet things activate the same signals in our brains. 

Is it wet or just cold?

So how do you tell if that hoodie you want to slip on is actually damp or just cold?

It turns out that squeezing or rubbing the cloth between your hands feeds your brain more information to help you detect if something is truly wet or dry, according to our friends over at The Conversation. So does looking closely at the fabric and stretching it to check for variations in color.

When in doubt, just toss it back in the dryer for a few minutes and if it truly is dry, you get to enjoy the bonus of a warm, toasty hoodie or blanket.